Greater Mana Expedition camps: Sapi and Mana Pools Zimbabwe

By Roxanne Reid
If the word adventure gets your pulse racing, you’ll love this six-night journey of exploration. Discover the wilderness on foot, by vehicle and by canoe, feel the thrill of being close to nature and wildlife while on safari, spend your days with a guide who knows tons of stuff he can’t wait to share. It’s the Greater Mana Expedition and you’ll find it at Sapi and Mana Pools Zimbabwe.

By calling it the Greater Mana Expedition, Great Plains Conservation Zimbabwe has evoked the essence of an expedition that intrepid explorers might have undertaken in days gone by. It takes place in the 50 000ha Mana Pools National Park and the adjoining 118 000ha Sapi Concession, both of which are part of the Greater Mana UNESCO World Heritage Site.

I’ll write more about the experience itself in another post. For now, come with me to discover the three camps where you spend two nights each, and find out more about what life is like while you’re in camp – the tents, the views, the food and the staff who quickly become friends.

Acacia Camp - day 1 & 2
You’ll spend the first two nights at Acacia Camp, with its beige canvas tents under a canopy of tall mopane trees, its views out over the Zambezi River. You’ll hear African fish eagles call in the morning. At night as you lie in your bed you can listen to spotted hyenas whoop and hippos grunt and wheeze.

There’s a writing desk and large chest in your tent, solar lights with paraffin lamps for added atmosphere. In keeping with the ‘expedition’ theme, a bucket shower is filled with hot water when you need it, and there are copper bowls and jugs of water instead of taps in the bathroom. Fresh jugs of hot water are delivered with your wake-up call and coffee in the early morning before dusk. One modern touch I appreciated was the flushing toilet behind a wooden screen.

​The Greater Mana Expedition takes just six people at any time, and it’s an intimate experience with your guides around the campfire, in the lounge with its nature books, and around an eight-seater table for meals. Because of the activities – walking among wildlife and canoeing on a river where there are crocodiles and hippos – no children under 12 are allowed.

​You won’t believe the quality of the food that comes out of a kitchen without modern conveniences. Using just a small gas hotplate and mostly wood fires, chef Traicos Ndlovu turns out amazing meals, including baked goodies from a bush oven (a big drum with coals underneath and above the baking sheet). With a background in top-notch hotels, he confessed with a grin that his first baking-with-coals efforts were a little dodgy, but he’s got it taped now.

​Fresh fruit, homemade muesli and porridge at breakfast, fresh salads at lunch and dinner, chicken, fish, lamb and beef, desserts that wouldn’t be out of place in a five-star restaurant – it’s all so yummy that it’s just as well this is an active safari where you may walk a couple of hours a day or go canoeing to work off some of the extra kilojoules.

Skybeds – day 3 & 4
The second camp is called Skybeds and is something totally different. It’s inland away from the Zambezi River, but set on a rise above the seasonal Sapi River. Although this river flows in summer, it’s a dry riverbed during May to November when the Greater Mana Expedition is running (it closes during the wet and hot summer months).

Skybeds’ units are wooden two-storey structures, with a bathroom and luggage room below and a white mozzie-net-encased bed on the upper level. There are also two chairs on the top level, where you can sit at dusk under red mahogany trees and listen to the doublebanded sandgrouse on their way to water to soak up in their chest feathers and take back to the chicks in the nest.

​The centerpiece of Skybeds camp is a handsome communal deck under a large red mahogany, with couches, a dining area and tea chests set up for drinks. Other trees around camp include jackalberries, mangosteens and sausage trees. 

​The deck looks out over the dry riverbed but there’s a natural pool directly below. Here we saw twinspots, Lilian’s lovebirds, blue waxbills and some bats flitting around in the evening light. From the tracks in the sand, our guide Lovemore Chiwara noted that other creatures that had visited recently included kudu, lion, leopard, hyena and mongoose.

​There was less wildlife in the area around this camp – a scarcity of even impala – but it netted us two of our best sightings of the whole trip, so don’t get lazy. It’s not every day you see three bush pigs and seven wild dogs so close to camp. And in any case, your professional guide is so full of knowledge about everything from tracks to trees and animal behaviour that he will keep you engaged and entertained whether you see any big game or not.

​As at Acacia Camp, the food here is exemplary. Chefs Prayer Ndhlovu and Ronaldo Nhokwana even produced thin-based crispy wood-fired pizzas for starters on our first evening. The second evening was a triumph of theatrical proportions; paraffin lamps lit our way to the dry riverbed where a table and chairs had been set up in an unashamedly romantic setting.

River Camp – day 5 & 6
Your last two nights you spend at River Camp along the Zambezi River. The tents and main area are similar to Acacia Camp, but set a bit closer to the river and with a better view. For something a little different, here chef Traicos (filling in for a chef on leave) showed off his underground oven with two chickens perfectly roasted. Amazing what you can do with some hot coals, a hole in the ground and a well-sealed cover with more coals on top.

​When you’re tucked up in bed, you may hear lions roaring some distance away. We also heard elephants breaking branches as they fed and learnt later that a honey badger had raided the kitchen at 2am. Early in the morning, you can watch the sun come up over the river to the soundtrack of hippos and hyenas. 

​On our second day we enjoyed a lovely long walk along the Zambezi to find tracks, birds, antelope and beautiful views. When we returned to River Camp lunch had been set up on an island opposite camp. On the way over in an aliboat, we watched nine elephants walking across the river with a small calf that was completely submerged except for its little trunk above the water like a snorkel. The elephants went one way on the small island to feed as we went the other for our last lunch of the expedition, a delicious spread of meat, salads, cheeses and fruit. 

​One last night in the Greater Mana wilderness with another roaring lion, an early-morning fish eagle to serenade us, and then our guide took us back to the airstrip to rejoin the ‘real’ world. After six nights in the bush, it was hard to say goodbye – to the staff, especially our guide, to the vistas and calls of the wild, to the sense of adventure.

If you pine for a true connection with nature, I can think of few better ways of finding that than by joining the Greater Mana Expedition and experiencing the excitement for yourself. It was an experience that will live on in my memory for many years to come.

Note: I was a guest of Great Plains Conservation Zimbabwe’s Greater Mana Expedition for six nights, but I was given free rein to write what I chose. I paid for all travel costs.

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